In hospitals and other health care environments, it is often necessary to substantially continuously collect and analyze a variety of medical data from a patient. These data may include electrocardiogram, temperature, blood pressure, respiration, pulse and other parameters.
Patient monitoring systems have typically fallen into one of two general categories: multi-function monitoring, recording and displaying systems which process and collect all of the data desired, but are bulky and difficult to transport; and small, portable systems which are easy to transport, but process and collect fewer types of data and have limited storage capability.
The need for continuity of data collection and display is most pressing in emergency situations. During an emergency, the speed at which a patient is transferred from an ambulance to an emergency room, or from a bed to an operating room or intensive care unit may substantially impact the patient's chance of survival. Not only is it is important to provide a similar level of monitoring during transport as was provided during stationary applications, but it is also desirable from a clinical point of view to provide a substantially continuous monitoring capability and data history availability which follows the patient.
In accordance with the above desires, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,604, entitled TRANSPORTABLE MODULAR PATIENT MONITOR, assigned to the same Assignee as the present invention, describes a transportable patient monitoring system of the type including at least two docking stations, one located at each of two geographically separated areas, both of which physically and electrically support a transportable patient monitor. Each docking station also provides a connection to a hospital communication network for transfer of patient related data between the portable monitor and the network.
Although the system described in the '604 patent is a vast improvement over the prior art, further improvement is desirable. For example, each patient care area is equipped with at least one node or connection point for connecting the docking station to the hospital network for allowing transfer of patient related information therebetween. Typically, a central monitoring or nurses station (or workstation) is also coupled to the node of the network for allowing a user (a nurse or physician) to monitor the patient from a remote location.
When a patient monitor is moved from one location in a hospital to another by transferring its connection from one docking station to another, it is important that certain aspects of its operation change with the change in its physical location. This is especially true of network-related configuration information. The conventional method of dealing with transported or relocated portable network devices is to manually reconfigure the networked device whenever it is moved. Information such as its Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is used by document printers, network servers, etc., are manually entered by a system administrator in order that the portable networked device can properly communicate with other devices connected to the network.
In a hospital setting, where it is the nurse that transports the patient, and moves the monitor with the patient, this is not an acceptable solution. Valuable time would be lost, errors in data entry could easily occur, and the nurse would be frustrated by having to deal with the equipment rather than the patient at a critical time.
It would be desirable to have a networked portable device in which the portable device can be easily disconnected from the network at one location and reconnected to the network at a different network location without requiring manual reconfiguration of the device with the network information of the new location.
Furthermore, it would be desirable that such easy disconnection for portable network devices be provided in a simple and cost effective manner.
It is an object of the present invention to provide such a network for portable devices, and specifically such a network for a portable patient monitoring system.